Israel has a plan to isolate the Gaza Strip and deprive it of its roots, it’s turned it in to a concentration camp, and it has nothing to do with Hamas, Israeli journalist Amira Hass wrote in Haaretz today.

Hass said that the Israeli authorities tighten their grip on the Gaza Strip and then they express their worries about it.

“The Gaza Strip today is a concentration camp,” she wrote.

“In the Gaza Strip, which is closed off like a confined and separated camp, live some two million people in one of the most densely populated places in the world. About 70 per cent of them are the descendants of refugees expelled from their homes. Absent freedom of movement condemned them to a life of unemployment, dreariness, poverty, disease, depression, contaminated water and soil, and dependence on ever-dwindling charity. And that is even without the military bombings and incursions.”

ho knew that he whose name must not be spoken was Benjamin? Apparently not Representative Ilhan Omar, the brave Muslim congresswoman from Minnesota who stated an inconvenient truth when she wrote, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby” over reports she was to be “punished” for her criticisms of Israel that include support of BDS.
Read more: https://forward.com/opinion/419117/no-ilhan-omar-is-not-anti-semitic-for...

Minnesota Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is under fierce attack from Chelsea Clinton and other Republican and Democratic establishment figures for voicing a fundamental truth: much of Congress is muzzled when it comes to Israel by the powerful lobby group AIPAC.

On Sunday, journalist Glenn Greenwald highlighted a news story about how Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy wants to punish Omar, and fellow Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, for their criticisms of Israel.

In a perverse move, McCarthy tried to equate the two women’s support for Palestinian rights with notorious Republican Congressman Steve King’s white supremacism.

“It’s stunning how much time US political leaders spend defending a foreign nation even if it means attacking free speech rights of Americans,” Greenwald tweeted.

Omar then retweeted Greenwald, adding the comment, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” the title of a rap song by Puff Daddy.

“Benjamins” is a slang term for $100 bills, a reference to the portrait of Benjamin Franklin that is on the banknotes.

Over the weekend, Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy said he would seek to formally sanction the first two Muslim congresswomen, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, because their criticism of Israel’s occupation of Palestine was even more reprehensible than Congressman Steve King’s defense of white supremacy. What motivated McCarthy’s false accusations of anti-Semitism? On Twitter, Omar suggested, “It’s all about the Benjamins baby,” quoting Puff Daddy’s ’90s paean to cash money. Omar subsequently specified that she was talking about spending from the likes of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, better known as AIPAC, the powerful pro-Israel lobbying organization.

Why attack Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who said that Congressional support for Israel has been bought by money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, at a time when someone who is very familiar with the lobby attests to its tremendous power. On the online news publication The Intercept, journalist Mehdi Hassan describes a meeting between Steven Rosen, a former president of AIPAC, and journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in 2005. “You see this napkin?” asked Rosen. “In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 senators on this napkin.”

Why attack Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who said that Congressional support for Israel has been bought by money from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, at a time when someone who is very familiar with the lobby attests to its tremendous power. On the online news publication The Intercept, journalist Mehdi Hassan describes a meeting between Steven Rosen, a former president of AIPAC, and journalist Jeffrey Goldberg in 2005. “You see this napkin?” asked Rosen. “In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 senators on this napkin.”

As liberal and progressive Jewish groups assailed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s deal to return supporters of the racist rabbi Meir Kahane to the Israeli Knesset, most leading American Jewish groups are keeping silent.

Nine major Jewish groups, including the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Federations of North America, did not respond to questions from the Forward about Netanyahu’s successful efforts to merge the national-religious Jewish Home party with Otzma Yehudit, or “Jewish Power,” a small party led by disciples of Kahane. The merger all but guarantees the Kahanist party a seat in the Knesset.

On Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, already saddled with a reputation of being willing to do or say anything to keep his job as prime minister, took a step that stretched that reputation even further.

In an effort to prevent right-wing votes in Israel’s April 9 election from going to waste, he brokered a merger between the revanchist religious Zionist Bayit Yehudi party and the neo-fascist racist Otzma Yehudit party that is likely to enable both parties to cross the required Knesset threshold and sit as part of a future Netanyahu government.

The American Jewish community has spent the past year excoriating the Women’s March for its refusal to condemn the racist and bigoted Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan. But what Netanyahu just did was much, much worse. He gave the imprimatur of the Israeli government itself to the ugliest and most violent Jewish extremist group in Israel’s history.

The dream that came true, in the form of a two-inch water line, was too good to be true. For about six months, 12 Palestinian West Bank villages in the South Hebron Hills enjoyed clean running water. That was until February 13, when staff from the Israeli Civil Administration, accompanied by soldiers and Border Police and a couple of bulldozers, arrived.

There’s been a lot of chatter about the role Israel will play in the 2020 elections. On the right as well as the far left, many have been pushing the narrative that Israel will feature heavily, with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party forcing Democratic candidates to the left. Just as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez have made issues like Medicare for All and the environment into urgent matters that candidates hoping for progressive votes must embrace — so the argument goes — so too will freshmen Congresswomen Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, both of whom support boycotting Israel, change the nature of the conversation about Israel in the Democratic Party.
Read more: https://forward.com/opinion/420148/netanyahu-is-a-gift-for-democrats/

Two Palestinian children have been killed in a blaze at their home in occupied Hebron after the Israeli authorities prevented the fire brigade from reaching them in time.

The two children – one of whom is believed to have been just 18-months old – were burned to death in a fire at their home in the Al-Salaymeh neighbourhood of Hebron’s Old City in the occupied West Bank. One was reported dead late last night, while the second succumbed to the burns received this morning after receiving emergency treatment at the nearby Hebron government hospital. A third child, thought to be the dead children’s brother, also suffered severe burns in the incident and remains in intensive care, according to hospital Director Dr Walid Zalloum.

Israel’s election committee has banned an alliance of Israeli Arab parties from fielding candidates in April’s general election. The move will bar candidates from the Balad-United Arab List—which represents Palestinian citizens of Israel—from running for Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. The ban was celebrated by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said in a statement, “Those who support terrorism will not be in the Israeli Knesset!” Palestinian candidate Heba Yazbak said the measure had nothing to do with terror, and was instead aimed at stifling Palestinian rights.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu was back in the headlines on Sunday, after declaring on social media that “Israel is not a state of all its citizens”. The Likud leader later doubled down, telling his cabinet that Israel is “the nation state not of all its citizens, but only of the Jewish people”.

Netanyahu’s comments are the latest grim episode in an election season that will see Israelis going to the polls on 9 April. Just last month, the prime minister helped engineer an election merger that could see far-right party Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) enter the Knesset.

That latter piece of realpolitik in particular prompted outrage from a number of Israeli politicians, analysts and even US-based groups better known for their Israel advocacy. According to the critics, Netanyahu’s boosting of the far-right and indulging of racist rhetoric endangers Israeli democracy.

J Street, the liberal Israel policy group, will compete with Birthright by launching its own free trip to Israel for college students.

The trip will aim to introduce students firsthand to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the lives of Israelis and Palestinians. Organized by J Street U, the group’s college arm, it will take 40 students to Israel and the West Bank for 10 days in July. Along with visiting sites in Israel, the group will meet Palestinian activists, Israeli social justice activists and Israeli settlers.

Sophie Edelhart says that for the longest time, she didn’t want to go anywhere near the topic of Israel and Palestine.

As a young Jewish woman growing up in San Francisco, her education was a curious mix of religious Jewish education and the liberal politics of California.

Much of the discussion about Israel as a consequence focused on “diplomacy”, careful talk of “both sides”, and the idea that a “two-state solution” would bring peace to Palestine-Israel. The conflict, she says, was always described to her as “complicated” and never by the naked truth: Israel was an occupying state.

“I would always try to rationalise and explain Israeli occupation by trying to add ‘nuance' to every conversation. Everything was about ‘nuance’,” the 22-year-old continues, emphasising her point with repeated air quotes, before uncurling her fingers and stopping to laugh at herself.